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Your own link "Two 9mm handguns were recovered from the scene, an official told NBCNewYork.com, and a rifle was found in the back of a car parked outside the school."

Hrm. So. Yeah.

Not so smug now I imagine.

Although he was carrying three weapons, he used only one of them in all of the school killings — a Bushmaster .223-caliber assault-style rifle similar to the one used by the snipers who terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in 2002. It was purchased legally, they said.

This will go nowhere. Same old trite shit will get bandied about (look up these discussions from 10 years ago on this same forum/subject). I'm surprised more stats and shit haven't been busted out yet. All I've got to say is that discussions such as these bring out some odd hypocritical shit in some people.

The government has no business regulating what I put in or take out of my body (e.g. drugs, power crystals, dildos, abortion).

Well, the fact of the matter is that the majority of firearm deaths in this country are from suicides (which btw is a far smaller percentage than say Japan's). I mean, it's my body and I don't think anyone has any business attempting to say what I can and can not put into it (even if it's a bullet).

Go ahead and ban scary guns again. Meanwhile, my own personal experience will continue to demonstrate that texting teens and moms behind the wheel of 4,000lbs death machines will always be a far greater threat to my safety than a gun-wielding loonie.

I really thought you enlightened types were above the hysterics crap. These gun "debates" are always fun.

How is it hysterics when the USA has more gun deaths per capita than anywhere else by an enormous margin?

Because the majority are from people choosing to end their own lives?

I mean, do what you want. A few guys fly some planes into a couple of buildings and everyone is losing their shit over the erosion of rights, hysterical overreactions, security theater, etc. Why not the same reaction with a few whack-tards that want a little attention? All you're really doing is help Bushmaster sell more units this month. Just in time for Christmas!

Don't get me wrong, I don't wish anyone harm. But seriously, **** you if you decide to destroy your own life with drugs, alcohol, sex, watching the Hobbit in 48fps, or by taking your own life with a gun. Maybe if we had readily available doctor assisted suicide we'd see a drastic (up to 55%!) reduction in firearm deaths. Why isn't NOW the time to talk about suicide control?

Don't get me wrong, I don't wish anyone harm. But seriously, **** you if you decide to destroy your own life with drugs, alcohol, sex, watching the Hobbit in 48fps, or by taking your own life with a gun. Maybe if we had readily available doctor assisted suicide we'd see a drastic (up to 55%!) reduction in firearm deaths. Why isn't NOW the time to talk about suicide control?

So does the US have higher suicides per capita than everywhere else, too?

So does the US have higher suicides per capita than everywhere else, too?

I wish we did, the tragically depressed could just snuff themselves with a razor in a hot bath, instead of going for "glory" on the news.

New legislation, any mass murderer will not be plastered all over the media, they'll have their names erased from all public records, and will never be officially recognized. No glory, no recognition, nothing.

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
- Thomas Paine

I wish we did, the tragically depressed could just snuff themselves with a razor in a hot bath, instead of going for "glory" on the news.
New legislation, any mass murderer will not be plastered all over the media, they'll have their names erased from all public records, and will never be officially recognized. No glory, no recognition, nothing.

Lemme get this straight: according to you, it's impossible to achieve any meaningful gun control in the US because of its strong, constitutionally-supported, long-enduring gun culture, but we can totally achieve significant media censorship in the US despite of its strong, constitutionally-supported, long-enduring freedom of speech?

We can't control the NUTJOBS any more than they can in other countries.

Lets start monitoring the 13-25 year old's who seem to go nuts when growing up becomes to much like reality.
Better training for teachers and school admins.
Arming the teachers. (It seems to work in Israel).

I guess this really answers the question "Is there an event SO horrific, so violent and so shocking that Americans might even consider that gun control is a good thing?"
I mean, what is a gun for if not to kill people. You can chunter on about self defense, right to bear arms etc but the end of story is that a gun is a machine with one purpose, to end life at distance. And that purpose is completely incompatible with a modern society.

Actually, shooting some clay pigeons with a shotgun is pretty f*cking awesome. If I had more disposable income I'd be more into it.

News changed the news. That was what was said on friday.. that the M4 was in the trunk, that he killed his mom who was a teacher, and that his brother was found dead in his house. Turns out all of it was misinformation. ****ing media.

We can't control the NUTJOBS any more than they can in other countries.
Lets start monitoring the 13-25 year old's who seem to go nuts when growing up becomes to much like reality.
Better training for teachers and school admins.
Arming the teachers. (It seems to work in Israel).
Guns don't need the controlling. People do. Personal responsibility.

Are you aware you just countered your own argument (Last line) before you even made it? (First line).

The Israel argument just tells me that you get your arguments from the right-wingtard site liberallogic101.com or whatever its called. Or Facebook.
Teachers aren't armed in the UK and we have had fewer school shootings than Israel in the last decade (0 by my count). So there goes that stupid example, blown out of the water. Israel is a country that is pretty much at war given the constant threat of rocket attacks and terrorism, this is not the case in the USA any more than it is in Europe.

So instead of tightening gun controls to reduce the number of firearms at large in the US, instead of starting this reduction by taxing them heavily which might help pay off some of that deficit everyone has been so worried about, lets pay to arm the teachers. Lets pay for training them to shoot and kill, maybe in some places you could just hire school marshals as well. More metal detectors, surveillance on anyone whose mental stability is questionable, incarceration for them if they get worse. And lets share this extra cost among everyone whether they like playing with guns or not.

Maybe all the kids could have kevlar vests to wear at school. Maybe the schools should have high concrete walls to stop snipers shooting over them, covered in barbed wire to stop people climbing them, maybe land mines would be a good idea. Hey, why not move every school inside the perimeter of the nearest army base?

People without guns don't need as much controlling, because they can't shoot anyone.

I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....

"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts

I'm not pro-gun, and as such I am not anti-gun either. I defend the pure intention of the second amendment....

Now with that out of the way....

Why, in the name of sanity, is the solution posed by gun nuts in times like these is to ARM EVERYONE??? Do we live in the f**king wild west? Does anyone actually believe this tragedy would have been averted if the shop teacher was packing heat?

Seriously, gun nuts, take a step back and just for one minute of your lives try and envision the world you propose. This nutcase was able to shoot up a school because he had easy access to guns in his home, and your solution is MOAR GUNS???? I have tried my best over the years to defend gun ownership. My very close friends own guns and I defend their right to do so vehemently....but if you expect reasonable people such as myself to go along with this plan to arm everyone in order to secure safety you be trippin'

I'm not pro-gun, and as such I am not anti-gun either. I defend the pure intention of the second amendment....

Now with that out of the way....

Why, in the name of sanity, is the solution posed by gun nuts in times like these is to ARM EVERYONE??? Do we live in the f**king wild west? Does anyone actually believe this tragedy would have been averted if the shop teacher was packing heat?

Seriously, gun nuts, take a step back and just for one minute of your lives try and envision the world you propose. This nutcase was able to shoot up a school because he had easy access to guns in his home, and your solution is MOAR GUNS???? I have tried my best over the years to defend gun ownership. My very close friends own guns and I defend their right to do so vehemently....but if you expect reasonable people such as myself to go along with this plan to arm everyone in order to secure safety you be trippin'

Exactly. Well said!

It is also annoying hearing these lazy explanations about how violent video games and movies are partly to blame. These same games and movies are available and consumed all over the world. If you want to make the case that this is a parenting issue because parents do not moderate the game playing and movie watching, fine, but what are the reasons for this? You have to make the argument rather than just going for lazy shorthand involving the existence of these games and movies.

Well... technically Sek, if one of those teachers WAS armed.... who knows. What I don't get are the teachers that just try to hide or run away. You have 0% chance at survival. ****ing stab that mother with some scissors, throw staplers, spray fire extinguishers... anything. If you're pretty much screwed, may as well try to take them out, right? I would think a fire extingusiher filled with thumbtacks might be enough of a temp weapon that you could stomp on his face or something. ?

You could smash a window and use the fire extinguisher to blind him while the kids escaped through said window. Its easily said by those of us who weren't there but in the heat of the moment its probably not so easily done. Most people freeze or panic and when you are talking about elementary teachers they should not be thought ill of for doing just that.

I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....

True enough. I'm just going to go on the record that one of these times something like this is happening, people are just going to turn primal and end the threat themselves. I mean, take Sept 11th. Oh, okay, terorrists, we'll do whatever you want. KABOOM! Ever since, any terrorist threat has been beaten to a bloody pulp on the plane, ala the shoe bomber.

The teachers protected the kids the best they could. If the kids were hiding in a thin-walled closet behind me, I wouldn't attack a gunman, because if he returned fire in a spray of bullets, well, you know.

News changed the news. That was what was said on friday.. that the M4 was in the trunk, that he killed his mom who was a teacher, and that his brother was found dead in his house. Turns out all of it was misinformation. ****ing media.

****ing judgement jumping to conclusions.

Why is everything so completely different now?

The simple fact that this gun was accessible, but that he maybe didn't use it changes your stance on gun control?

There's something wrong here, and it's not just the media updating their stories as more information comes in.

I'm not pro-gun, and as such I am not anti-gun either. I defend the pure intention of the second amendment....

Now with that out of the way....

Why, in the name of sanity, is the solution posed by gun nuts in times like these is to ARM EVERYONE??? Do we live in the f**king wild west? Does anyone actually believe this tragedy would have been averted if the shop teacher was packing heat?

Seriously, gun nuts, take a step back and just for one minute of your lives try and envision the world you propose. This nutcase was able to shoot up a school because he had easy access to guns in his home, and your solution is MOAR GUNS???? I have tried my best over the years to defend gun ownership. My very close friends own guns and I defend their right to do so vehemently....but if you expect reasonable people such as myself to go along with this plan to arm everyone in order to secure safety you be trippin'

True enough. I'm just going to go on the record that one of these times something like this is happening, people are just going to turn primal and end the threat themselves. I mean, take Sept 11th. Oh, okay, terorrists, we'll do whatever you want. KABOOM! Ever since, any terrorist threat has been beaten to a bloody pulp on the plane, ala the shoe bomber.

No sure how often you've had guns pointed at you (I have, by small town Policemen in Florida) but there is nothing in my experience that makes one submit so quickly. As a father, the first thing that I would do is try to protect the kids, and your instinct isn't to start throwing chairs at someone with a gun.

From what I understand, for a civilian to own a gun in Israel, they had to have served at least 2 years in the military and held the rank of Captain, or have been a Lieutenant Colonel or equivalent in any other service. There's a very big difference between someone who's gone through proper training and gun safety owning a gun, and some redneck who thinks he needs an accessory to allow truck nuts on his assault rifle.

"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts

From what I understand, for a civilian to own a gun in Israel, they had to have served at least 2 years in the military and held the rank of Captain, or have been a Lieutenant Colonel or equivalent in any other service. There's a very big difference between someone who's gone through proper training and gun safety owning a gun, and some redneck who thinks he needs an accessory to allow truck nuts on his assault rifle.

Uh, a lot of this doesn't make sense. Do you have a source?

I mean, can you make captain in 2 years? Otherwise, requiring both 2 years and captain rank is utterly redundant. It's like someone said "you can't do that unless you're a doctor and have at least two years of schooling," when doctors obviously require more than two years of school to become a doctor at all.

And what service other than the military has colonel ranks?

The very first Google link for "Israeli gun laws" gives http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/israel which says "The minimum age for gun ownership in Israel is 27 years and 21 years if served in the military," which clearly means you don't need military service to own a gun. (I don't know if that site is credible.)

In Israel, it used to be that all soldiers would take the guns home with them. Now they have to leave them on base. Over the years they’ve done this — it began, I think, in 2006 — there’s been a 60 percent decrease in suicide on weekends among IDS soldiers. And it did not correspond to an increase in weekday suicide. People think suicide is an impulse that exists and builds. This shows that doesn’t happen. The impulse to suicide is transitory. Someone with access to a gun at that moment may commit suicide, but if not, they may not.

From what I understand, for a civilian to own a gun in Israel, they had to have served at least 2 years in the military and held the rank of Captain, or have been a Lieutenant Colonel or equivalent in any other service. There's a very big difference between someone who's gone through proper training and gun safety owning a gun, and some redneck who thinks he needs an accessory to allow truck nuts on his assault rifle.

Israel still has conscription, and the minimum term required is 3 years for men and 2 years for women. Reaching the two year limit seems to be automatic, unless exempt.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

Israel still has conscription, and the minimum term required is 3 years for men and 2 years for women. Reaching the two year limit seems to be automatic, unless exempt.

Lots of people are exempt from service, like Arabs, and pretty much any Orthodox Jew who asks to be exempt for religious reasons. You also can be rejected from service for reasons like physical fitness, just like everywhere else. In practice, only about half of Israelis actually serve.

Lots of people are exempt from service, like Arabs, and pretty much any Orthodox Jew who asks to be exempt for religious reasons. You also can be rejected from service for reasons like physical fitness, just like everywhere else. In practice, only about half of Israelis actually serve.

I know - although I think the "half" figure is for Israeli women, a higher percentage of the men serve - but it is worth pointing out that "two years of military service" means something very different there than what it does in a nation without conscription.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

Is no one else aware that these are exceptionally difficult times for everyone? That increased stresses in society tend to lead to more antisocial behavior? And that the sudden increase in violent behavior this year has coincided with the most chaotic social and economic situations we've experienced in many years? It's not about guns, it's about the fact that people who need help with mental issues do not get that help (we don't like to pay for that sort of thing with tax dollars), and failing to help such people leads them to break down.

A lot of comparisons have been made with other countries where "this sort of thing just doesn't happen.' No, it doesn't. But the U.S. is the most non-homogenous society in the world, whereas other countries are much more socially uniform. Comparing us to Switzerland? Come on! The Swiss are a very tight, very uniform community; of course they don't have the kinds of stresses our very fractured, very disparate society has. And the Swiss have some very significant other things going for them, such as compulsory military training, which further ingrains a social identity and a sense of social responsibility. Put together the social chaos we have, and the very much non-uniform society we have, and you have a very difficult setting for anyone to deal with. What does a person who has difficulty dealing with "normal" social issues do when overwhelmed by all this chaos? Pretty typically, he breaks down, one way or another.

Finally, all these calls for new and very strict controls on who can possess and purchase what kinds of firearms and firearm-related items are a good starting point. But it wasn't the gun that took all those lives in Connecticut, it was the guy holding it. As has been stated earlier, no firearm has ever jumped up and done anything on its own, any more than an electric drill or can opener has. In the Virginia Tech tragedy, it was the Commonwealth of Virginia that failed by not ensuring that a person with severe mental issues and who was a significant threat to the community was not flagged as having been diagnosed as such, which allowed him to purchase firearms over the counter. If the Connecticut guy got these guns from his home, then why weren't those firearms secured to keep them out of his hands? Connecticut already has some significantly restrictive gun control laws; laws that did not keep this from happening. Laws do not seem to prevent lawless behavior anywhere. But maybe we do need laws that make the law abiding community aware of risks in society and that put the onus of controlling access to firearms on those law abiding owners.

I am strongly opposed to giving the shooter less responsibility for this crime with the thought that "if there weren't so many guns out there this would have been harder to pull off." From what I've read, this guy was very meticulous in his planning and went to a lot of trouble to arrange his actions and to get his hands on weapons (including handguns which federal law already prohibits persons under 21 from possessing without direct supervision), so stronger laws may have delayed the rampage by a bit, but they certainly wouldn't have stopped it.

You keep telling yourself that. It's just a shame that reality paints a very different picture.

OK, So show the facts and data to prove your idiotic assumptions.

Start by looking at places that don't have "American family values".

The fifties ended over here some decades ago, and somehow, we manage to keep guns locked up, and the people from broken homes who do go crazy manage to seriously injure one or two people when they run amok.

You keep telling yourself that. It's just a shame that reality paints a very different picture.

OK, So show the facts and data to prove your idiotic assumptions.

Start by looking at places that don't have "American family values".

...or at places that have values very close to "American family values". Such as Canada for instance, which is as American as can be without actually being America - we watch many of your TV channels, listen to your radios, shop at your border malls, and have all but adopted your general culture - and yet we don't have nearly the level of mass shootings you guys do. (To my knowledge we've had two "mass shootings" instances in the past ~25 years: a large one in 1989 [14 dead] and another in 2006 [1 dead, very lucky it wasn not more].) And has been pointed out earlier, our gun-related homicide rate is far lower....

...or at places that have values very close to "American family values". Such as Canada for instance, which is as American as can be without actually being America - we watch many of your TV channels, listen to your radios, shop at your border malls, and have all but adopted your general culture - and yet we don't have nearly the level of mass shootings you guys do. (To my knowledge we've had two in the past ~25 years: a large one in 1989 [14 dead] and another in 2006 [1 dead, very lucky it wasn not more].) And has been pointed out earlier, our gun-related homicide rate is far lower....

I'd be interested to see if a correlation could be found between gun crime in Canada and easy travel to the US.

...or at places that have values very close to "American family values". Such as Canada for instance, which is as American as can be without actually being America - we watch many of your TV channels, listen to your radios, shop at your border malls, and have all but adopted your general culture - and yet we don't have nearly the level of mass shootings you guys do. (To my knowledge we've had two in the past ~25 years: a large one in 1989 [14 dead] and another in 2006 [1 dead, very lucky it wasn not more].) And has been pointed out earlier, our gun-related homicide rate is far lower....

I'd be interested to see if a correlation could be found between gun crime in Canada and easy travel to the US.

Yeah, my understanding is that the majority of illegal weapons in Canada come from you guys.....most particularly handguns and assualt-style weapons of course.